Index Preface 04 Football in the chronicles of José Lins do Rego, Mario Filho and Nelson Rodrigues Fatima Martin Rodrigues Ferreira Antunes 06 Maracanã: temple of football Pedro de Castro da Cunha e Menezes 20 Brazil’s greatest World Cup rivals Mário Araújo 34 Interview: Zico 46 Scars (a football story) Luiz Ruffato 52 Football and literature: bad passes and give-and-go João Cezar de Castro Rocha 64 78 Two questions for Pelé Foreign policy and football 80 Vera Cíntia Alvarez Brazilian south-south cooperation in sports 92 Marco Farani 96 Interview: Sócrates Football in Brazilian music 98 Assis Ângelo Football, field of words 104 Leonel Kaz Football and national identity 112 Luiz Carlos Ribeiro 122 Football in Portuguese Preface Although England has been credited with the invention of football, the origins of the sport go back much further. Both the Chinese and the Greeks, before the Christian era, as well as the Florentines during the Renaissance, played games based on moving a sphere with their feet. Tsu-chu in China, Kemari, in Japan, Epyskiros, in Greece, and Harpastrum, in the Roman Empire, are some of the names of rudimentary forms of the game that became known as football. Developed by the English starting in the 12th century, it was only in the first half of the 19th century that football acquired a set of rules, seeking to differentiate it from rugby, another very popular sport in British schools. In 1863, the Football Association was created, consolidating the rules and organizing the first games and tournaments of the new sport. In Brazil, the so-called “British sport” would have its start three decades later, when Charles William Miller, a boy from São Paulo of English parents, returned from England bringing two leather balls in his suitcase. The passion for the game began to spread rapidly, and during the early years of the 20th century, many football clubs were started in São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian cities. The players were in their majority of European background. A few years later clubs such as Bangu and Vasco da Gama, from Rio de Janeiro, and Internacional, from Rio Grande do Sul, started accepting black and interracial players, a fact that would prove essential to the emergence of a whole lineage of talented football players, who would revolutionize the way in which football was played, and associate Brazil with excellence in this sport. The World Cup, first played in 1930, presented, from the beginning, a great stage for world football, where various nations displayed their skills to an international public increasingly interested in this new form of entertainment. After modest participations in the first two World Cups, the Brazilian team would show its strength in 1938, thanks to the skill of Leônidas da Silva, a black player of undeniable brilliance who astounded the European audience with his refined technique. 4 • FOOTBALL The quality of Brazilian football, followed regularly in regional championships which were increasingly enjoyed by the public and promoted by the media, made the country believe that it could attain international supremacy in the sport. And more than that, it could affirm the potentialities of Brazil as a nation, racially mixed and with unique talents and abilities, worthy of respect and admiration. At that point, therefore, Brazilian football was already more than a popular form of entertainment; it was Brazil’s cultural contribution to the world. The five victories in World Cups, starting in the 1950s, and the emergence of players such as Pelé, Garrincha, Zico, Romário and Ronaldo provided Brazil with international recognition regarding its excellence in football, and contributed to project a positive image of Brazil to the world. To prove this, one needs only to note that from 46 players who were invited to play with the Brazilian national team, just five were playing for Brazilian clubs at the time they were invited; all others were under contract with some of the strongest clubs on the planet, enchanted by the special way Brazilians play the sport. The current edition of the magazine Texts from Brazil offers readers some of the main aspects of this unique element of Brazilian culture that is football. The magazine has attempted to balance critical essays, which seek to analyze the importance of football in the construction of a national identity, with more journalistic articles, which describe the daily love Brazilians have for the sport. Also included are some interesting comparisons between football, elevated to the position of a great cultural expression of our country, and other artistic expressions, such as music and literature. The presence of football in literature is represented by a short story from the award-winning writer Luiz Ruffato. The great masters were also invited to express their opinions: in three interviews Pelé, Zico and Sócrates share their opinions on current issues of great importance to both Brazilian and world football. Throughout the magazine, the reader will find boxes with historical curiosities and information on some of the most important Brazilian players of all time, as well as a list of common expressions in Portuguese that had their origins in football jargon. Aware of the excellence of Brazilian football and its contribution in promoting Brazil throughout the world, the Ministry of External Relations has given special attention to international cooperation in sports, a theme that deserved detailed attention in this edition of Texts from Brazil . In addition, in its role of promoting Brazilian culture abroad, the Ministry of External Relations’ Cultural Department has increasingly sought to support exhibitions, talks, book signings, film showings and other events related to football. We invite the reader to enjoy in these pages a little of the history of football in Brazil, and understand how it became one of the most cherished treasures among Brazilians. The current edition of Texts from Brazil comes with an insert of stickers of posters of all 19 World Cups, in the best style of the sticker albums that have enchanted, in the past as now, admirers of this extraordinary sport. FOOTBALL • 5 Football in the chronicles of José Lins do Rego, Mario Filho and Nelson Rodrigues By Fatima Martin Rodrigues Ferreira Antunes The World Cup of 1938 was the first Brazilians were able to follow live on the radio. It had unthinkably high audience ratings and made football even more popular in Brazil. The radio novelty brought fans closer to the games, because they could cheer the plays in real time. If radio fueled enthusiasm, print journalism contributed to extend the feeling of involvement that remained with the fans after the games, and promoted the debate about the success of the Brazilian team, which placed third in France. 6 • FOOTBALL Ramón Muniz While Brazilians turned their eyes towards football Their descriptions of Brazilian culture and people and sought to understand how the English game are extremely rich and became the basis of many was being reinvented on tropical soil, it was also schools of interpretation of the country’s condition. the time when many intellectuals started to think These intellectuals were proud of their nationalism; about national issues and national identity, in the for them, nationalism was the process of becoming so-called “Brazilian studies” — essays on historical conscious of the limitations and virtues of the interpretation, often written from a sociological idiosyncratic Brazilian society. perspective. At the time, sociology was understood more as a point of view than an objective research of These ideas became landmarks in thinking about social reality. Studies done by Paulo Prado (Retrato Brazil and Brazilians, and their influence went do Brasil, 1928), Gilberto Freyre (Casa Grande & beyond the limits of academic studies, extending Senzala, 1933), and Sergio Buarque de Holanda into art, social sciences, and other literary genres. (Raízes do Brasil, 1936) explored the origins of They influenced intellectuals, students, journalists the Brazilian national character; they sought to and artists, who, through their art, generated their reveal the country’s internal logic, in order to better own interpretations of the subject, established understand it and design policies to improve it. new associations between ideas, and extracted FOOTBALL • 7 surrounding national identity in football chronicles published by these authors between 1950 and 1960, a period marked by growing industrialization and FOOTBALL marked populism in politics. PLAYERS José Lins do Rego and the brothers Nelson Rodrigues and Mario Filho are considered the greatest Brazilian Castilho – 1927-1987 football chroniclers, due to the frequency with which they wrote on the subject, the literary quality Position: goalkeeper of their texts, and the influence they had over the Clubs: Fluminense readers. They were great supporters of the sport and Brazilian national team: 1950-1962 passionate fans. Writing was their main activity, but (25 games) they were also successful in other areas. José Lins do Rego, a director of the Clube de Regatas do Flamengo and a member of other sports organizations, first became famous as a writer and new meanings which had not been perceived in novelist. Menino de Engenho (1932) and Fogo Morto previous readings. The result of this reassessment of (1943) are among his most famous works1. Mario Brazil and its people also reached newspapers and, Filho was a journalist and owned a sports newspaper consequently, literary essayists, who were viscerally — Jornal dos Sports. This activity enabled him to connected to newspapers. be connected to many people in the sports world, as well as politicians and intellectuals2. Nelson The ideas expressed in the “Brazilian studies” would Rodrigues was not involved with professional continue to echo for decades in the chronicles of football or politics but, as a playwright, he was close José Lins do Rego (Vila do Pilar, PB, 1901 — Rio de to many intellectuals and artists of the time3.